


but now i’m all smiles

by lesbianryuko



Category: Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game), Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Childhood, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Loss of Parent(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Canon, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23267692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianryuko/pseuds/lesbianryuko
Summary: When Nico is six years old, she realizes her father is dying.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	but now i’m all smiles

**Author's Note:**

> hi all!! i wrote this for the [kindergarden zine](https://kindergarden-zine.tumblr.com/) and now i can post it!! i wanted to explore nico's relationship with her father, based on her [school idol diary entry](https://lovelivesid.wordpress.com/yazawa-nico/chapter-3/) in which it's pretty much all but stated that her father is dead. i had her call him "papa" and her mom "mama" because it says in the footnotes that she calls him "papa" in the original text of the diary entry. thank u for reading, enjoy!! <3

It’s almost dinnertime, and Nico Yazawa is on top of the world.

She rides atop her father’s broad shoulders, feeling his large, warm hands holding her body so she doesn’t fall. Her body bounces as they make their way down the hill from her preschool and tread down the sidewalk of their neighborhood. They’re lucky to live so close—from up here, Nico can already see her house very faintly in the distance. She can see everything from up here, it seems: the houses, the preschool, the trees, the bright orange sky. It’s a perfect day.

Underneath her, her father says, “Do you want to sing your theme song, Nico?”

He asks her this question every day after school, and Nico always has the same response. “Yes!”

Her father counts to three, and then they both start singing together, a song her father made up just for her. “Nico nii, nico nii, ni-co ni-co nii! Nico nii, nico nii, ni-co ni-co nii! Smiling cheerfully, with a ni-co ni-co nii! Smiling like the sun, with a ni-co ni-co nii!”

The song always puts a smile on her face, but she supposes that’s the whole point. Her name, “Nico,” means “smile,” and her father has always told her that he wants her to keep on smiling, even when things get hard. That’s why Nico tries her best to smile even when she scrapes her knee on the playground, or when she doesn’t want to clean her room, and if she ever has trouble smiling, she just sings her father’s song. It always puts her in a better mood, but the best time to sing it is when she’s on her father’s shoulders, coming back from a long day at school, knowing that dinner should be ready by the time they get home. With the warmth of the setting sun on her face and her fingers able to touch the tree branches, she feels like she can go anywhere, do anything, be anything.

After a few rounds, her father lets her off of his shoulders so that they can walk the rest of the way together. They play hopscotch on the sidewalk, even though there isn’t any drawn on the ground. They’ve done this so many times that Nico has memorized the pattern: three hops on one foot, and then it goes two feet, one foot, two feet, one foot, two feet, and repeat. Of course, the pattern can vary, but this is the one she and her father go by, all the way from the sidewalk up the driveway and into the house.

She happens to land on both feet right when she makes it inside, and she and her father both cheer. “That means today is a lucky day!” her father says excitedly as he bends down to give her a congratulatory hug.

Nico grins so wide she thinks her face might split. It’s a good day, a perfect day, a _lucky_ day.

—

That night, Nico awakens to the sound of sirens.

They’re louder than they usually are when she hears them in the distance, and the concerning part is that they don’t get quieter, don’t seem to fade away. Confused and annoyed, Nico pulls herself out of bed and wanders over to the window, standing on her tiptoes so that she can see over the windowsill. Her heart nearly stops right there.

Sitting in the driveway of her home is an ambulance.

Nico knows what an ambulance is, and she knows what it means. Ambulance equals hospital. Ambulance equals someone in danger.

Nico pounds out of her bedroom and nearly trips on her way down the stairs from running so fast. Her mother is standing in the living room, watching as a few men who look sort of like doctors or nurses wheel her father out the front door on some sort of portable bed. He looks like he’s sleeping.

“Mama,” she says, her voice sounding small and squeaky, like a mouse. “Mama, what’s happening?”

Her mother, who looks stressed but not devastated, sighs and rubs her eye tiredly. “Papa is going to the hospital,” she says. “Something urgent came up that they have to fix, but he’ll be fine after that.” She gives Nico a tiny smile, but Nico doesn’t feel much better.

Her father has some sort of sickness, has had it for as long as she can remember. He’s been in and out of hospitals before, but they were always appointments, regular check-ups to make sure he was doing okay or to give him some special medicine. He hasn’t had to do that in a while, though. The doctors said he was going to be fine; they called it “remission.” This shouldn’t be happening.

“Hey,” her mother says, pointing to her own face and smiling with her teeth. “Nico nico nii, remember?”

Nico tries her best to smile back. “Ni-co ni-co nii,” she chants, but she can still feel the fear in her heart.

Her mother nods. “Nico nico nii,” she repeats. “Now go back to sleep, sweetie. We’ll go visit Papa tomorrow, since you don’t have school.”

Nico nods and trudges back up the stairs. As she reluctantly climbs into bed, she sings her father’s song to herself, picturing his radiant and smiling face, but part of her feels betrayed—not by him, necessarily, but by the world. Today was supposed to be a lucky day.

—

They find out the next day that Nico’s father is probably going to have to stay in the hospital for a bit longer than they thought he would. The disease has come back, the doctors say; they call it a “recurrence,” a relapse. Nico tries to put on a brave face in front of her father, but it doesn’t feel right. It feels like lying. She knows he wants her to keep on smiling, but it’s hard to smile when she thinks about how he’s not going to be waiting for her after preschool, not going to carry her on those big, strong shoulders of his. Still, she finds some solace in the knowledge that it’s just for a little while, and then he’ll be back on his feet, playing hopscotch with her like he always does, and everything in the world will be right again.

—

He isn’t getting better.

Days turn into weeks, which turn into even longer, and still her father hasn’t been discharged from the hospital. New problems keep popping up—“complications,” they say—so they have to keep giving him different treatments. Her mother’s insistence that he’ll come home soon has started eroding away, and Nico can see through her halfhearted reassurances. They visit him in the hospital all the time, and he certainly doesn’t look like he’s getting any better. In fact, every time they visit him, he almost seems worse. He’s more tired, and he doesn’t look as big or strong as he used to. He still smiles whenever he sees them, though, a real smile, and despite everything, visiting him helps Nico smile, too.

One day near the beginning of winter, Nico’s mother takes her to a nearby florist, an old family friend, to pick out some flowers for her father. They did this a few months ago for his birthday, but today isn’t a special day, she doesn’t think, so she’s not quite sure why they’re doing it again.

“Sometimes it’s just nice to have flowers,” her mother tells her as they walk through the door. The tinkling of the bell that signals their arrival is music to Nico’s tiny ears.

She has to look at everything. Only the prettiest, happiest of flowers will do for her father, and there are just so many types and arrangements for her to assess. Some of them are too boring; some are too fancy. She needs something that will make her father happy, and she needs something that will show him how happy he makes her.

After considering several different arrangements of various pinks and blues, Nico finds herself drawn to an arrangement she almost missed, sitting on a somewhat higher perch near the back of the store. It’s simple but bright: yellow lilies punctuated by soft purple sweet peas. The contrast mesmerizes her, reminding her of when she and her father would color together. He would tell her about primary colors and complementary colors, and she would find herself surprised by how certain colors look better next to a particular hue.

“This one,” she calls. “This one, Mama!”

As they pay for the flowers, the florist tells them that this arrangement is great for expressing joy, as well as gratitude for the good times. Nico prides herself on picking the perfect gift, as always.

She’s so excited at the prospect of giving her father such a wonderful bouquet, she almost forgets that they’re seeing him in the hospital. She almost forgets that he’s been looking more sickly with every visit. She almost forgets that he’s dying.

Granted, nobody’s ever _told_ her that he’s dying, but Nico can tell. She’s six now. She’s not dumb. She knows that death happens when someone is very old or sick and that it means they won’t come back. She knows that it’s sad, and she knows that it’s happening to her father. She’s long since stopped asking him when he’s going to come home.

Her mother carries the flowers and leads her through the hallways to her father’s room, a route she’s terribly familiar with by now. She hates the strange smells and sounds of the hospital, and she hates looking at the weird machines that her father is hooked up to. But it’s worth it to see him.

Her father smiles as soon as they walk in. “Nico!” he says, but his voice is weak, and he doesn’t seem to be able to move much. “Come give me a hug.”

Her mother helps her climb up onto a nearby chair so that she can lean over and hug him without hurting him. He feels soft and bony, not at all like the strong arms she remembers. She wonders if he would even still be able to lift her.

“Papa, I picked out flowers for you,” she says, plopping down on the chair. Her mother smiles and places the vase on the windowsill. Nico concludes that she made the right choice—she likes the way they immediately brighten up the dull gray of a cloudy winter day.

Her father grins. “They look lovely. So beautiful and cheerful. Just like you.”

Nico smiles briefly, but she can’t stop thinking about something the florist said to her mother when she thought Nico couldn’t hear. _Nowadays sweet peas are mostly just used because they’re pretty,_ she said, _but in flower language, they mean “goodbye.”_ Nico glances back over at the flowers, thinking about the message they’re sending: _Thank you for all the happy times and for being such a wonderful father. Goodbye. I’ll miss you._

Her father must be able to tell that she’s preoccupied—of course he can—because he reaches over and takes her small hand in his large one. “Now, now,” he says, “it’ll be alright. Just remember the song. We can sing it together.”

Nico forces herself to smile again. “Okay.”

Her father counts to three, and then they both start singing, much softer than they would when walking home from school. “Nico nii, nico nii, ni-co ni-co nii! Nico nii, nico nii, ni-co ni-co nii!”

Both of their voices are shaking, his likely from the sickness, hers probably because she’s trying not to cry. But she loves her father, and she knows that all he wants is for her to be happy, so she keeps going. “Smiling cheerfully, with a ni-co ni-co nii! Smiling like the sun, with a ni-co ni-co nii!”

When they finish, Nico glances out the window and is surprised to see the first few flakes of snow drifting down. “It’s snowing!”

Her father laughs. “Well, would you look at that? Our singing brought the first snow of the season.” He pats Nico on the shoulder. “When you get home, Nico, I want you to go out there and have fun in the snow. No, _twice_ the fun. Enough fun for you and me both.”

Nico nods and hugs him again, burying her face into his neck so that he doesn’t have to see her cry.

—

Her father passes away the next day.

The months that follow are a whirlwind of sorrow and strangeness. Life seems to simultaneously stop in its tracks, yet move too fast at the same time. Life as Nico knows it has stopped, but this new life, this life-without-her-father, feels like it’s running off without her, leaving her in the dust like a train she just missed.

That winter is the hardest winter of her life. The cold and the grayness are a perfect mirror for the mood that permeates the Yazawa household. No matter how much she reminds herself to keep smiling, no matter how many times she sings her theme song, no matter how many good memories she replays in her mind, the world still feels muted, the colors drained, the air freezing without the warmth of her father’s arms or smile. Even on days when the sun shines, it feels like it’s mocking them.

It’s over that lonely spring break, when it’s still too cold outside to properly be called “spring,” that Nico discovers idols. She’d known about them before, but she never really knew what they did, never really took an interest. Now, though, with nothing to do for a week and little motivation to do much of anything, Nico finds herself watching idol performances on television, fascinated by their perfect choreography, their matching outfits, their cheerful harmonies.

What really gets her, though, is the audience’s reactions. They yell so loudly that Nico wonders how their lungs don’t give out, waving multicolored lightsticks and sometimes shouting different phrases in unison. At the end of a performance, when the idols say their goodbyes and tell the crowd how much they love them, the fans cheer and even cry in happiness, and that’s when it hits her: a desire unlike any she’s ever experienced. A desire to share in that moment. A desire to make people happy.

Now that she thinks about it, becoming an idol seems obvious. It feels like her father has been preparing her for it all along by singing along with her and teaching her the importance of spreading happiness.

She remembers the song she’s been singing all her life. It was meant to make her smile, but maybe it can make others smile, too.

—

On the first day of elementary school, Nico stands in front of the mirror in her room, practicing her idol moves. She’s wearing an adorable pink skirt, her hair ties look like cherries, and her backpack is shaped like a bunny rabbit. Nico bends down both of her middle and ring fingers so that only her pinkies, pointer fingers, and thumbs are sticking out. “Ni-co ni-co nii!” she cheers, putting her hands up and smiling widely. It’s going to be a perfect day, maybe even a _lucky_ day.

It’s still hard without her father, and she has a feeling that it’s going to be hard for a long time. But he wanted her to keep smiling, and that’s what she’s going to do.

“Nico!” her mother says as she leans up against the doorway. “Let me take a picture of you outside on your first day of elementary school!”

So they both head out the front door and slip their shoes on. Her mother stands in the yard and holds up her camera. “Smile!”

Nico strikes the same pose she was practicing in the mirror. _Thank you, Papa,_ she thinks, and as she sends her love up to the heavens, Nico Yazawa, future number one idol in the universe, flashes a winning grin and sings, “ _Ni-co ni-co nii!_ ”


End file.
